Tuesday, August 29, 2017

We’ll skip Lillie Leonardi – things like
this wouldn’t have merited an entry had she not written a book about it, pushed by
WND,
but even though she did I think we’re all best served by skipping her.

Lane Lester is a Professor of Biology at
Emmanuel Missionary College (or, as it is currently known, Andrew University),
Georgia – a small, extremist, Pentecostal college that offers non-accredited “education”
– and Regional Representative of the Institute for Creation Research.
Lester calls himself a “creationist geneticist”, though we have been unable to
locate any real research from his hand – instead, Lester appears to write
textbooks and articles for non-specialists in various creationist magazines,
the purpose of which is outreach, not research, insofar as the goal of
creationist “scientists” is, always, to broadcast their ideas and ensnare souls for Jesus, not to
actually try to scientifically test their ideas. Now Lester does, indeed, have
a real education. That doesn’t make him a scientist, of course, but it does
make him qualified to sign various creationist petitions,
such as the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism and the CMIlist of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation.

Diagnosis: Scientists are people who do
science. Lester is not a scientist, and any attempt to make it look like he is
can be safely dismissed. Lunatic fundie, is what he is. Limited impact, but
students do attend his sorry excuse for an educational institution, and doing
so is probably not free.

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Bryan Leonard is one of the alleged martyrs featured in the
creationist movements dishonest “academic freedom” campaigns,
people having been the victim of what Intelligent Design creationists would describe as oppression by the Darwinist establishment (i.e. actual
scientists with actual expertise and a commitment to science). A more
comprehensive description of the so-called Bryan Leonard affair can be found
here.
We’ll just provide a brief recap:

Now, by 2005 Leonard was also a doctoral candidate in
science education at Ohio State University, doing dissertation research on the
academic merits of an ID-based “critical analysis” approach to teaching
evolution in public schools. Scheduled to defend on June 6, the defense was
suddenly postponed to the shock and horror of conspiracy theorists and
pseudoscientists everywhere. And of course, in
real life the postponement was due to the questionable tactics and strategy
of the creationists, in particular the composition of Leonard’s committee. You
see, the OSU requires that the committee must reflect the expertise needed for
the dissertation and must have at least three members: two from the science
education program area and one from outside the science education program area.
Leonard’s final dissertation committee did not meet those requirements – in particular, it contained no member from the science education program area
– and one suspects this was because his advisor, Paul Post, realized that it
would not pass if they included, you know, actual experts on biology on the
committee. Instead, the committee included, in addition to an assistant
professor in French & Italian, Glen R. Needham of the Department of
Entomology and Robert DiSilvestro of the Department of Human Nutrition, both of whom have track-records as
champions of creationism and pseudoscience – both are signatories to the
Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism,
for instance, and DiSilvestro, surely coincidentally, also testified for the
anti-science side at the Kansas evolution hearings. (He was also at that time
contact person for the Ohio Intelligent Design Movement’s 52 Ohio Scientists Call for Academic Freedom on Darwin’s Theory
petition; and Needham was a signatory). Leonard’s advisor Paul Post has no
relevant qualifications to comment on evolution either.

So, when members of the faculty of the OSU brought these and
other anomalies to the attention of appropriate administrators in the Graduate
School, the assistant professor of French & Italian asked to be relieved
and was replaced by the Dean of the College of Biological Sciences who was an evolutionary biologist. At that
time, the defense was suddenly postponed, apparently at the request of
Leonard’s advisor; it was never rescheduled. And note: It was Leonard’s advisor who asked for the postponement,
after it became clear that he wouldn’t be allowed to violate the guidelines in
his attempt to fix the jury in Leonard’s favor (which rather strongly suggests
that the creationists on the committee had little confidence in the actual merits of Leonard’s pro-creationist
thesis). The pattern of behavior from the Intelligent Design community is
rather striking – even if Leonard’s thesis were
perfectly OK, the attempt of the Intelligent Design community to subvert the
process is telling, isn’t it? Being caught in the act, the Intelligent Design
community responded by claiming “violation of academic freedom”, of course.
Indeed, a decade later the case remains one of their go-to examples of howChristians are oppressed in academia.

Diagnosis: We haven’t heard much from Leonard since 2005,
but the Bryan Leonard case is occasionally revived by pseudoscientists who
aren’t that concerned with what actually
happened. Now, one can reasonably argue that Leonard was, indeed, a victim in
that particular case – a victim of the shenanigans of established creationists,
of course – but his activities on the Ohio State BOE’s model curriculum-writing
committee and role in the Kansas Kangaroo court hearings still qualify him for
an entry in our Encyclopedia.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Peter Leithart is a theocrat and president of Theopolis Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural
Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the author of numerous books, some
coauthored with George Grant or Gary DeMar,
including a series of children’s bedtime stories that we haven’t read but
nevertheless recommend that parents who wish to raise wholesome, good and wise kids avoid with a passion. Taking a cue from
Islamic fundamentalists – reconstructionists like Leithart tend to harbor a certain envy for radical jihadists – Leithart has presented “American Christians with a call to
martyrdom,” in particular as a response to the legality of abortion and gay
marriage: “Throughout Scripture,”
Leithart says (in his book Between Babel and Beast),
“the only power that can overcome the
seemingly invincible omnipotence of a Babel or a Beast is the power of
martyrdom, the power of the witness to King Jesus to the point of loss and
death.” At least Leithart, as opposed to some dominionist, recognizes that
the type of hatred and bigotry he would prefer be the law is neither popular
nor embedded in the Constitution:
“To be faithful, Christian witness must
be witness against America.” How Leithart’s claims are relevantly different
from a Taliban video is less clear, insofar as Leithart is explicitly and repeatedly calling for Christians to seek martyrdom in combat against America and its
values.

It is probably not even worth mentioning that Leithart is a
young-earth creationism; indeed, he doesn’t even seem to bother with the
science: any semblance of criticism of a literary reading of the Bible from
science or history is for Leithart entirely beside the point.

Diagnosis: He does his best to make himself ideologically
indistinguishable from the most delusionally rabid Taliban jihadists – and he
seems to have a number of followers (David Lane,
for instance). Dangerous.

Leiter has also asserted that the “end game” of the gay rights
movement is “child molestation.” (No,
he has no decency, which is presumably why he feels the need to put “decency”
in the name of his organization.) “They are
after our kids,” says Leiter; “they
are after the bibles and guns that Americans cling to but they are also after
us and after our kids.” He also warned that gay rights advocates “will not rest until all of their opposition
is totally eliminated,” but fortunately assured us that they will ultimately
lose, because “the Lord will vanquish
evil.” Apparently, this is a recurring theme; also in connection with
blaiming Hurricane Sandy on the gays, Leiter said that the “LGBT radical homosexualist movement”
will increase child abuse by giving molesters a “license to victimize” children and even “a certain degree of diplomatic immunity.”

Here is Leiter in 2013 warning then-Senate candidate Tom Price about the “tremendous medical health impact and
economic impact” of the “homosexual
agenda” and asking him (Price) whether Congress will consider studying the
“fiscal impact” that “promoting such a lifestyle will result in.”
Leiter’s general point was ostensibly (but not really) that any bill involving
social issues should require a study of the “fiscal impact” the legislation would have. Price agreed, of course.

Diagnosis: Hate, hate and more hate, fuelled by fanatic
delusions. Same as always.